200th Anniversary of the Publication of the Work History of the Slavic Language and Literature of All Dialects

The History of the Slavic Language and Literature in All Dialects (1826), written by Pavol Jozef Šafárik (1795 – 1861), a significant writer and Slavist, is among the pioneering works of European Slavic Studies. The book was written during Šafárik’s stay in Novi Sad and it was published, with the support of Martin Hamuljak (1789 – 1859), in German in Buda. The development of the languages and literatures of Slavic nations, from time immemorial up to Šafárik’s days, is introduced through a comparative method. The work is based on the theories of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 – 1803), a German philosopher who assigned great importance to the concept of linguistic and national diversity. Before writing the book, the author conducted extensive archival research and studied sources and scientific literature related to Slavic issues. The book contains a long introduction and two parts. Part 1 focuses on the languages and literatures of the Southeastern Slavic group.

Part 2 on those of the Northwestern Slavs. Part 2 includes a separate chapter on the History of the Slovak Language and Literature. By doing so Šafárik ensured that Slovak was considered equal to the other Slavic languages. He characterised the Slovaks as “dignified descendants of the Carpathian and Danubian proto-Slavs” who “in many regards deserved to be paid greater attention”. This chapter in Part 2 outlines Slovak history and deals with the geographic expansion of the Slovaks in the Kingdom of Hungary and their confessional structure. Individual subchapters are devoted to the characteristics of Slovak language and the history of Slovak literature from time immemorial up to the time of the author. Slovak literature is viewed as an autonomous entity, independent of the wider Czechoslovak and Slavic whole. Šafárik was the first Slavist to perceive Slavic languages and literatures as an internally differentiated whole. Through this work he laid the foundation for further systematic and comparative research into Slavic languages and literatures. His idea that there was a close connection between the character of a nation, its language and its literature as the attributes of an individual cultural and social life also significantly encouraged national awareness and foreshadowed thoughts on the history of language and literature over the following years.

Miloslav Vojtech